The Dark Lady's Mask: A Novel of Shakespeare's Muse

From the author of Ecstasy, a novel of Renaissance England's first female poet, and her collaboration—and love affair—with William Shakespeare.

Aemilia Bassano Lanier is beautiful and accomplished, but her societal conformity ends there. She frequently cross-dresses to escape her loveless marriage and to gain freedoms only men enjoy—and then a chance encounter with a ragged, little-known poet named Shakespeare changes everything.

The two outsiders strike up a literary bargain: they leave pla...